Solution: I hired a housecleaning service to come just once a month.

Even with our improved financial situation, I still can’t bring myself to hire someone to do the whole job for me.  It’s an enormous expense, and I really don’t mind the actual cleaning, so it seems like a waste.   But I found a service that will do a decent job for $100.  That is a major bargain here in pork-city (DC).   And that $100 is definitely worth it, because the problem with doing it myself is not really the time it takes, but the stress that it causes.

I have never, ever had a regular housecleaning routine.  I tried really hard a couple of year ago, using a checklist and allowing myself reasonable time frames.  But I still couldn’t work up the motivation to keep it up.  Really, I’ve always just cleaned something when it was dirty enough to bug me.  But that leaves me in the state of always being annoyed at the dirtiness of some part my house, and always feeling like I should be doing more.  It has been a constant source of stress for as long as I can remember.

Now, a bargain once-a-month job is not going to keep my house in a state that doesn’t bug me.  We have a child, a dog, and a cat, and you can see the increase in dirtiness on a daily basis around here!  But what that once-a-month cleaning gives me is the knowledge that I’ll have a reboot.  If I just can’t find the time or motivation to vacuum for that entire month, I know it will be resolved by the maids.  If I just clean the bathrooms for that month because that’s what bugs me, I know that I won’t also have to squeeze in mopping and dusting and all the rest.  And if I don’t touch a thing for the entire month, I won’t be left with an even bigger cleaning job.  I’ll just have suffered a dirty house for a while, but then I’ll get to start over.  This knowledge is all I need to feel totally relaxed about the whole process.

Hopefully I won’t raise my cleanliness standards and start getting stressed out again.  I admit that that is a real possibility.  But, for now, this seems to be working.  Hallelujah!

We’re nowhere near done yet – this house was a real mess when we moved in – but we did enough that I feel like we live in a mostly nice place now.  And I finally have photos!

We installed new lighting – new fixtures in the dining room and foyer and recessed lights in the kitchen and basement.  These photos were taken before we repaired and painted the ceilings, but isn’t that chandelier awesome?

Before

After

Before

After

We moved Sammy to her new bedroom.  (She picked the pretty blue paint color and the girly pink lamp.)  This project included moving Adam’s office to the basement bedroom, painting, installing closet shelving, buying and setting up Sam’s “big girl bed,” and all the little details of setting up a little girl’s room.  We also had to do some touch-up painting in the old room, which is going to eventually be the nursery for SS:

Sam's old room

Sam's new room

Since we have two really brightly colored bedrooms right next to each other, we decided to paint the dormer windows the same color as the other bedroom.  This really integrates the two rooms.  I love them both!  And Sammy was totally fine moving to her new room.  She moved to 5 new houses in her first 3 years of life, so change is not a problem for her.

A while back, I moved Sam’s playroom from the dining room into the kitchen eating area.  The only problem with that was the hard, tile floor in the kitchen.  To solve that, we installed a large Flor area rug, and now we have a really wonderful playroom:

New playroom

And finally, the best improvement of all was the painting.  We painted the whole main level except the powder room, plus the upstairs hall, which was a mess.  You can’t see the colors too well in photos, but we’re very happy with them.  It’s all very clean and modern.  You can see the pumpkin color of the playroom above.  The cooking part of the kitchen is yellow, and the separate colors help to define both rooms nicely:

Yellow kitchen

Here’s a shot that shows the blue of the dining room next to the grey of the living room and hallways.  We picked cool colors to balance out the really warm orange tones of the bookcases and floors:

Blue and Grey

I really dig the fact that our dining room has warm, orange floors and blue walls, and the playroom has warm, orange walls and a blue floor.  Again, the integration by reverse colors.  It’s impossible to get a good photo of it, though.

And then, of course, we replaced the dishwasher and hot water heater, both of which died during this process.  You can see the boring diswasher in the kitchen photo.  I just bought something to last the next 3 years or so, since we’ll have to completely update the kitchen at some point.  It’s very loud and doesn’t clean the dishes well, but I think it will get us through.

Now we just have to get all of our art back up on the walls.  If we get it done by the end of the month, we’ll be in good shape!

Sammy’s new room is painted and she is sleeping in it now, but on an air mattress.  We haven’t yet had time to get to a store to buy her full-sized mattress.  Really, I just can’t get to the store.  But I did figure out the closet situation and bought a kit.  Now we just need to install it and move all of her stuff from her old closet in.  Luckily, she loves her new room!  I just hope she doesn’t get upset when we replace the air mattress with her real bed.

It’s chaos here.  And if you’ve read my blog regularly, you know how I feel about chaos.  I’m certainly stressed and on-edge, but I’m handling it a lot better than I thought I would.  I hope I can keep it up for another week or so, until the worst is behind us.

The good part is that I surprised myself today by researching and purchasing a new dishwasher online in 3 hours – it will be installed on Wednesday.  Maybe the hot water heater will only take 4 or 5, and maybe I can get it by the end of next week.  (I’m going to check out the tankless kind.) I usually take a month or so for a project like that.  I also finished the design and purchase of the closet shelving today, got 4 more paint samples and slapped them up on the wall, paid all the bills, changed the filter in the air furnace (which is how I noticed the leak), and kept my e-mail inbox at zero.  I actually feel pretty good about this day.

Two observations:  1) Everything is so much easier now that we are not under as much financial strain.  2) You can really get a lot done when your child watches TV all day. (She’s still sick, but ok, in case you were worried.)

I guess I can’t stop blogging after all.  I only meant to write the first sentence.

Sorry, but painting is not an easy fix!  If you do it yourself, you need a couple of days per room, plus the cost of supplies which is not insignificant.  You can’t paint a little bit here and a little bit there.  You need to have big blocks of time, so, if you’re like us, you’ll have to hire it out.  If you do, it is close to $1000 per room (at least that’s the big city price), and you still have quite a bit of inconvenience.

I got three quotes to paint the entire interior of our house including all doors and trim, and two of them were higher than the cost of replacing all the windows in the house.  Can you imagine that?  Something just seems off here.  Luckily, I think I found a guy who will do it for just a bit over half that.  He was recommended by someone I trust, so as long as I watch him and his crew like a hawk, I’m hoping it will be ok.  There’s nothing more disturbing than a bad paint job.  We’ve been living with what one painter called “the worst touch up job I have ever seen” for a year now.

Tip: When buying a house, if the paint is in bad shape, ask the seller for a credit of about $1,000 per big room (don’t count bathrooms and hallways – just bedrooms, living room, kitchen, etc.).  And if they won’t give it to you and you still want the house, make sure you have that much to spend.

And don’t trust HGTV!